I'm not exaggerating when I say this: The better my game has become the more people have become dismissive or even openly hostile towards it. When it was a programmer art pile of nuts and bolts everyone complimented me and told me how great it is but the better it became the more it provoked angry and negative reactions from those same people.

/agdg/ wants you to fail. They want you to stay a loser with no realization and no future. The better you become the more they will hate you for it. Nothing about this is rational. Nothing about this is meritocratic. The better your game becomes it will just attract more hostility from the inner circle - those very same devs you know and love - they feel threatened by you. It's ugly but it's the truth.